Florida Politics

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

A Conversation with Rob Davidson,of Davidson Fine Art Gallery, and his staff about the St. Pete Arts Scene Part 2

Opinion
by: E. Eugene Webb

To get some perspective about the St. Pete Arts scene,
earlier in the month I sat down with Rob Davidson and his staff of Davidson's
Fine Art Gallery to get the view of a long time member of the St. Petersburg
Arts scene.

This is the second of a 5 Post series where Rob
Davidson talks about his Gallery, the Arts in St. Pete and how he sees the
future of the arts in St. Petersburg.

My Questions are
in Bold

"I was very
impressed by the Gallery first time I was in, how long has the Gallery been
functioning," I began?

"We have been
here a little over a year now", Rob replied. "We had a Gallery in the
other location but this Gallery took a little while to get set up and
functioning. We have done a couple of shows, we did a show last summer. Now we
are just starting to get to the point where we have figured out how we are
going to use the display space. We going to revamp the gallery space and change
some of the displays to make it a little more obvious we have a gallery and
make it a little more inviting for our customers."

I asked Erin O'Malley,
Gallery Manager, "Who is currently on exhibit and what is coming in the
near future?"

The current artist on display is Laura
Monroe-Duprey," Erin replied. She is an artist that works in pastels and
as you can see she does a lot of work with children and animals. These are
enigmatic narratives that have a little mystery to them because you can look
into them and keep looking and questioning. They are not as immediate as they
might seem at first which is what draws people to her work."

"Which is why we named the show The Second Story," Rob
Added.

"Coming up I have been talking to Emily Ayres an
artist in art administration over at Eckerd College. She's been making art for
many years and does really interesting printmaking, mixed media work that deals
with identity in sort of surreal way." Erin continued.

"We have also made a commitment to do a show with
Charles Axt who is another long time local artist. He previously worked in
sculpture and now does very interesting contemporary collage works which will
be the feature of the upcoming show."

"We also put out a Bay Area wide call to artists
and are accepting submissions from artists who would like to show their work in
our gallery. I am really interested in showing work that isn't typical to what
you would normally see in a St. Pete Gallery."

"I am looking for something striking that really
gets to people and would cause them to talk about it; pieces that would give
the Davidson Fine Art Gallery a reputation for having interesting work. I would
like to make the Gallery about artists that have an extreme amount of
dedication to their craft and to their career and want to do something that is
out of the ordinary."

If there are
artists out there that would be interested in contacting you how do they do
that," I asked?

"In the Gallery Section of the website there is a
sheet that describes the general instructions for submitting your work for
review. At this point we are only considering artists with a cohesive body of
work that are prepared to have a month long solo show, which is a great
opportunity for any local artist regardless of their level of experience."

"What are
you short range and medium range goals for this Gallery," I asked?

Erin replied, "Short range: renovating the space
and considering ways to hang and present the art. Medium range: continuing to
bring in local artists and gradually building something from the gallery space.
In many ways it already is a community space with artists coming in for
suppliesand framing, and we want to
continue to build that community aspect to the point where when we have a show
opening, people know about it and are excited to hang out not just for the art
but for the networking opportunities."

The Davidson
Fine Art Gallery us located at 2036 Central Avenue, St. Petersburg, FL 33712, the
Phone Number is 727-827-1888. Right across the Street from Haslems Book Store.

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